Let the Cleansin' Begin!

On January 1st, I embarked on the Adventure Cleanse Tune-up (ACT, for short), an almost month-long cleanse that shuns sugar, alcohol, processed food, gluten, and caffeine. It's from the Crazy Sexy Life website, an awesome online vegan community founded by cancer survivor Kris Carr.

This summer, Carr launched a huge ACT cleanse and hundreds of people signed up to do it together (including my bloggy friend Jessy from Happy Vegan Face). Jessy's posts inspired me, but I wasn't quite ready to jump in this summer. And then my other bloggy friend Leslie of Pixiepine started a variation on the ACT cleanse in November. At that time, I was busy shoving Tofurkey and way too much pie down my throat. By December, I was feeling a little overwhelmed with processed food and sugar. But I scarfed it down anyway and enjoyed every bite.

With the new year however, I'm ready to do some detoxing. As a Level 3 on the ACT cleanse, I'm doing raw breakfasts and lunches, but I get to eat cooked, whole foods for dinner. It's supposed to be a 28-day cleanse, but I'm going to San Francisco for a work conference at the end of the month. So I'm cutting the cleanse off on January 26th.

Day one began on New Year's Day. I woke with a massive headache from all the champagne on New Year's Eve. So I whipped up this Green Juice of celery, cucumber, kale, sprouts, and an apple:

I drank it and went back to sleep for an hour. When I woke again, the headache (and my hangover) were totally gone! Green juice has crazy healing power. Thankfully, the ACT requires that I drink a green juice every day.

Lunch was tasty Raw Veggie Burgers from Living in the Raw Gourmet by Rose Lee Calabro:

These burgers (made from almonds, sunflower seeds, beets, bell pepper, and other veggies) were the first dish I made in my brand new Excalibur dehydrator, a Xmas gift from my parents. They were delicious, and I love the vibrant pink color. I served 'em on romaine lettuce "buns" with a big ole' side salad.

Calabro's book is another review cookbook from the Book Publishing Company. It's loaded with mouth-watering raw goodies, and many require a dehydrator. Until now, most of my raw cookbooks contained recipes that didn't require one, so I'm glad to have Calabro's recipes to try in my new toy. Expect lots more from this book throughout the month.

For dinner, I made Stuffed Cabbage with Black-Eyed Peas from More Fabulous Beans by Barb Bloomfield:

Here's an inside shot (that's black-eyed peas and brown rice peeking out):

I always, always have black-eyed peas and cabbage on New Year's Day for health and prosperity throughout the year. Yep, I'm superstitious. But I usually make my own version of Hoppin' John. Unfortunately, my recipe isn't ACT-friendly since it contains processed vegan sausage.

This recipe, however, was totally ACT-safe without any changes. It comes from a great vegan cookbook filled with over 100 bean recipes. Its author, Barb Bloomfield, lives on the Farm (an amazing veg intentional community) in Summertown, Tennessee, and I actually had the pleasure of staying with her on a visit to the Farm a couple years ago. She autographed my copy of her book. I can see this book being a great resource during the cleanse since I'm supposed to focus on getting most of my protein from beans. By the way, it's also published by the Farm's Book Publishing Company.

Day one was so far, so good. I've been working on getting off coffee for about two weeks now, so that wasn't an issue. Instead, I drink green and white tea. It's has a little caffeine, but I think that's okay. I'm not ready to give caffeine up altogether. As for alcohol, I'm subbing kombucha tea whenever I'd normally have a glass of wine or a beer. Though I can't have sugar, I'm allowed to have agave (and I'm also letting brown rice syrup slide too).